Microscopes, particularly surgical microscopes, are supported by microscope stands and surgical microscope stands, respectively, which are either placed on a floor or a piece of furniture or equipment, or mounted to a wall or ceiling.
Commonly owned international patent application WO-A1-98/52484 describes a microscope stand, in particular, a stand for a surgical microscope, including a pivot support, a mount attached to a first end of the pivot support and adapted to mount the microscope to the microscope stand, and a C-slide displacement assembly provided on the second end of the pivot support for balancing the microscope about a pivot axis associated with a stand interface. The pivot support is pivotable about an axis defined by a support axle held by the C-slide displacement assembly. The C-slide displacement assembly is pivotable about a pivot axis relative to the stand interface. All pivoting movements can be suppressed, typically by braking force, so as to prevent the elements of the microscope stand from being unintentionally moved out of adjustment. The pivot support is held to the stand interface by a parallel guide mechanism having linear guides, which allows the pivot support to perform a tilt-free circular motion in a vertical plane. This microscope stand enables the microscope to be guided vertically during pivoting of the pivot support, and enables balancing of different weight configurations on the microscope with respect to the pivot axis, which typically intersects a vertical axis of rotation in the stand.
However, the drawback of the known approach is that, as the pivot support is pivoted, the linear guides of the parallel guide mechanism may make noises which may be perceived as annoying by some users and, in addition, the parallel guide mechanism has a relatively high weight. Furthermore, such a known parallel guide mechanism requires a large amount of space, especially because it must include parallel guides for both the horizontal and vertical directions.
Therefore, there is still a need to improve a microscope stand, and in particular a stand for a surgical microscope, in such a way that it does not have the aforementioned disadvantages and, in particular, that it is compact and easy to manufacture, and makes less noise during adjustment.